...

Fucked to Portishead.

Was great.

Hmm...

Social psychology IS interesting. Very interesting. I just wish cognitive psychology were as interesting.

That doesn't mean that a 9AM lecture after staying around last night was a good thing - just not as bad as it could've been.

In other news I have to go and see Bertrand Merlier again. Good times!

Thoughts

Today has been odd. Really odd.

I wake up just before 10AM feeling like crap with my glasses on. No doubt the result of another psychology essay (Neuropsychology - Alzheimer's Disease) all finished and then making the rash decision to watch David Gilmour live in Gdansk at half four in the morning. Silly man.

Then I realised it's been over a year since Finn passed away. Filled with sadness and anger; only to be distracted by a fantastic concert and lecture by Bertrand Merlier into HCI Gesture control (using EyeCon and Max/MSP) in timbral composition. I've got some reasonably extensive notes that might help and in theory this could work in Jitter too - it's just a lot more work. Now I sit here remembering Finn, going to skip off to Amelia's and look at the (Selmer) guitar she bought in Canterbury market yesterday (yeah, she's travelled all the way to Kent and back again for the weekend - madness I say) and probably get no work done when I should be learning C Programming and Set Theory. I'm bad at this whole life thing. Really bad. Can't wait until next year when I actually get some module choice.

It's going to be a difficult day.

Once Again...

And now for the third time in a week, my mind isn't switching off. I've completed that blasted essay (started it at the time of my last post) and hopefully it's half-decent, but now despite being up since 7.30AM, I can't sleep. I'm worrying about the Corelli Theory assignment, the neuropsychology WBA (which actually looks like a piece of piss) and Max5, as well as the Pro Tools assignment that looks like I'm going to have to come early back from holiday to do.

I just can't fucking switch off. Am I turning into a workaholic?! That would be the biggest turnaround of character trait in history I suspect. Procrastination is one of the few things I'm good that. That and writing pointed emails to people in relative power positions. Oh God, I hope she doesn't take that the wrong way...

University Life

So, Lancaster University. Michaelmas Term. Week 7.

Good Lord, are we there already? That's worrying.

I honestly don't know how postgraduates and second and third years cope. Frankly, University is a terrifying and equally rewarding experience. There seems to be an assumption that most people here are eighteen and have done A-Levels. I qualify for neither of these endowments and as such feel thoroughly excluded from the learning style - at least in Psychology - which is my minor subject.

It's irritating. I want to study music. I want to study harmony and technology. I want to sit here with Max/MSP and create crazy sounds. I want to just for once write a bloody third inversion chord - I would love that right now (although that's not part of the harmony exercises) and fill my work with parallel fifths. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the harmony exercises right now. Surprisingly, I love it. I absolutely do; admittedly the rules we are working to are Bach-based, so effectively rather limited, but it's still *fun* even if it's incredibly hard at times. I feel like I've made massive progress there.

Psychology is a different matter. Scattershot, irrelevant lectures, secret assessments that I seem to know NOTHING about until the marks are published and can't find mine there - indicating that I've missed the assessment and finding out that textbooks exist that I wasn't told about and that I wasn't given my actual timetable until recently. I was supposedly given them at the point of signing up - my arse was I - and now as a result I'm behind, don't have a textbook and have missed two assessments. Then I have an essay due in that all the books in the library have already been claimed and are reserved WELL past the due date of the actual work and I'm going to continue to complain and bitch and blame everyone but myself. That would be in keeping with the Duncan philosophy at least.

Funny for an existentialist and I suppose that this is all as much my fault as anyone elses' but there is just no communication to the students in my minor. We just turn up here, write this and then go there and whilst University is supposed to be independent - I am not some sort of essay-writing, WBA-doing (I fucking HATE WBA's) robot and if I'm not TOLD when I need to do them, then it won't happen.

So here ends the rant that if you sat through I am both impressed and surprised.

Signing off...